Loudspeaker arrays may emit sound using various directivity/beam patterns. The directivity patterns may cause sound to be aimed with different densities, shapes, and along different paths into a room or listening area. For example, an omnidirectional directivity pattern emits sound uniformly throughout a room while a highly directed cardioid pattern emits sound primarily at a target.
Each stream or channel in a piece of sound program content may be driven using a different directivity pattern. For example, speech in a first stream of audio may utilize a highly directed pattern, while background music in a second stream may utilize a less directed pattern. Audio systems may process each audio stream with separate filters to form each respective directivity pattern. Although production of multiple types/styles of directivity patterns may allow separate channels or components of a piece of sound program content to be accurately represented to a user or set of users, processing using separate filters for each stream and/or transducer combination may be overly complex and inefficient.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.